1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of fabrication of printed circuit boards. More specifically, the present invention relates to the fabrication of modular printed circuit boards.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the past, both processors and memory circuits were mounted directly on a motherboard. This required the motherboard designer to include pin layout and trace patterns for each of these integrated circuits in the motherboard design. As a result, any change requiring a different processor or memory circuit required changing the motherboard.
One technique used to solve the problem of continuously redesigning the motherboard whenever a different memory circuit was needed was to move the memory to a separate, removable circuit board. The removable circuit board, in turn, connected to the motherboard. Another approach was to make custom printed circuit boards that contained both processors and memory. However, customized circuit boards do not permit easy interchangeability or upgrades. Further, the cost of creating custom printed circuit boards can be substantial.
There is also an ongoing need to decrease the size of printed circuit boards while at the same time increasing the number of processors and memory circuits hosted on the board.